


There’s a wolf that lives inside your head

by midzilla



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Animal Death, Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29383593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midzilla/pseuds/midzilla
Summary: Outside of Vizima, the bodies of daemons are found with their people no where to be seen. Strange occurrences like that warrant hiring a witcher, of course. So a witcher is hired.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	There’s a wolf that lives inside your head

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Hi! How are you?
> 
> This is a madness that gripped me and wouldn't release me. I wrote this with game/books in mind, thinking that this takes place a few years after [The Price of Neutrality](https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_Price_of_Neutrality) and heavily inspired by the first game. Knowledge of neither should be needed, I hope. Just know that the timeline confuses me greatly.
> 
> Please forgive my errors, this is not read by anyone but me before posting. Thank you for reading, you are lovely.

> Indeed, there is nothing more offensive than those monsters who defy and defile nature known by the name of witcher. Born of foul sorcery and perversion of the body, they are immoral, soulless scoundrels without conscience and virtue. Being without a daemon from their conception, they have no place amongst decent and honest folk.
> 
> In the mountain, their keep of Kaer Morhen sits where these villains multiply, powered by their foul rituals. They must be wiped off the face of the earth and all traces of their evil treated with salt and lye until not remains.
> 
> **Monstrum** , _anonymous_

The building Geralt is led to leans heavily at one corner, either poorly built or poorly maintained. Not much more than a place to lay the dead in the interim while whoever is tasked to figure out what to do with them. The roof does enough so that the weather sheltered away to afford the time. The woman, named either Isolde or Isolt — he couldn’t make out which it was from her lisp — had muttered such wonderings of what to do on the way over. Discussing with the daemon on her shoulder the merits of a burial versus a pyre, then arguing the other way.

Inside, in the corner is a linen cloth, spotted with dirt. A small lump, all things considered.

He approaches it, tilts his head. “All found together?”

“Yessir.”

Kneeling down, he lifts the corner carefully. It’s wrapped around them and under them; even in death great care was taken not to touch the small bodies beneath. As if these daemons were alive and their people were still near by to show the most basic form of respect. As if this wasn’t something strange enough to warrant hiring a witcher.

In the background he can hear Isolde’s or Isolt’s daemon scitter and scrape about with nervous movement.

On the way here, he’d been told that they were all the same, all found laying together in just off of a field on the bank of the river. The area was less traveled, Isolde or Isolt told him she had no idea how long they had been there. In reality the daemons are just similar that just a quick glance would be fooled. A field mouse, a deer mouse and what looks to be a small city rat. Daemons of people close in personality, maybe family or just closely related by circumstance. Similar personalities or just a lot in common. So similar, in fact, he’d bet on triplets.

“No sign of their persons?”

“No sir.”

At that he pauses and looks over his shoulder, leaning back to look at her comfortably “I’m not a sir,” he says.

Isolde or Isolt flinches under his gaze, her daemons back arching upwards and fur raising higher still. Immediately, Geralt turns back. He’ll ask less questions, he thinks.

He leans down just a bit closer, turns his head and squints. On each of them is uneven, patchy fur. Small bald spots where hair fell out but didn’t grow back. The line of the spine of the closest is bumpy and visible, the ribs of another poking upwards at a sharp angle. All suffered neglect or starvation before death, by the looks of it over the course of at least a month. The paws on each body is curled tight, a sign of great pain felt before the end. Death hadn’t been easy for them.

Slowly, as if the bodies could still spook back from his hand, he picks the closest up. The field mouse, it’s left ear notched. In the background he hears Isolde’s or Isolt’s daemon hiss and spit something low, Isolde or Isolt making a shocked sound. He focuses on the task, turning the body this way and that, rotating it to look for a wound, a sign of trauma, anything that would say what cost this daemon it’s life. Nothing, not even a bruise.

If a daemon didn’t go to dust, would it’s body hold the signs of what happened to their person? Geralt doesn’t know the answer to that. This is new, weird.

It’s light he notes, like there’s nothing actually in his hand. It’s not the first time he’s held someone else's daemon but still he’s not sure if that’s normal, time has made that knowledge hard to trust. He wonders if he squeezes what would happen, would they finally crumble away.

He doesn’t.

Lifting it closer to his nose he inhales. Nothing. This he knows as normal.

If it wasn’t for his eyes, he wouldn’t believe they were here.

Geralt’s head tilts again. _Why is that_ , he asks himself. _Why are you separate and still solid._

“Sir!” Isolde or Isolt says, voice pitchy and high. “I don’t expect a _witcher_ to understand—”

“Do whatever you want.”

“What!”

He places the body down gently, tilting its head in a way that would be comfortable if there was still life in the body, pulling the cloth back over the trio. There’s nothing more he can learn from them like this.

“For the dead, do what you want. They were someone, they should be treated as someone,” Geralt states as he stands. He brushes off his knees, rolls his shoulders before turning again to look at Isolde or Isolt. Her face is blotchy and red, a small sweat has started on her brow. He’s a lot more stress than she’s used to dealing with but she’s holding herself up straight. He gestures towards the bodies, “Did you know their people?”

“N-no sir,” she shakes her head. Her daemon is now sitting on her shoulder, body of a tabby cat, hair still on end and watching him. He hasn’t heard it speak a clear word but it’s not so unusual for daemons not to speak to other people let alone with witchers. Especially not witchers. “Never seen the likes of them before.”

“Did anyone?”

“No sir. None of us ever seen daemons like that before. Old Maggy by the river has a muskrat, that’s about the closest to them,” Isolde or Isolt shakes her head and wrings her hands in front of herself. “No one got a mouse of any kind.”

Not from this place then, Geralt thinks with a short nod to himself. Places like this, someone knows you. There’s a great enough fear of strangers that even those passing through are often remembered.

Geralt looks back at the bodies for a moment before turning back. He’s done here.

-

“Could they be from sorcessers? Sorcesses?” Dandelion frowns, mouth puckering to the side as he thinks. He seems to roll the thoughts around in his head for a moment, juggle them about and almost make a song. “Sorcessei?”

“Dandelion…”

The streets of Vizima’s market quarter had been ever busy and loud earlier when he had entered the city, on his way to meet with the bard at the New Narakort. As always it was full of scents and bodies, an assault of the senses he tried to avoid whenever possible. It wasn’t too much of a struggle for a witcher to make his way, most are scared that just a bush against him would mean death, their daemon crumbling to dust or vanishing or worse. This long into his life, Geralt was still unsure what that worse was but he trusted in the morbid creativity of humans.

The guards at their posts and walking the streets had eyed him warily. He’s not welcome in the city long term. They would be happy to see him gone or blame him for any wrongdoing to get rid of him.

It doesn’t matter.

The notice board outside of the New Narakort was still bare, mostly mundane requests for this and that. A request for some goats, a letter complaining about a rude encounter in the market, something about shoes. He had paused only briefly to skim — winter is coming up and if he didn’t head to the keep this year, it’d be good to have a few more orens to keep from it getting too slim.

Dandelion hadn’t been hard to find when he went inside, sat on a table tuning his lute. Ankle of one leg on the knee of the other. Beside him was Daffodil, today in the form of a small blue sparrow, tittering and whistling along as he strummed this cord or that.

Waving his hand, Dandelion asks, “Well, could they?”

Geralt leans back more against the wall, resting the back of his skull against it for a moment. He knocks back against it once before looking forward again. “No.”

“Are you sure?” Daffodil’s voice is quiet but honest.

“Seen those dead,” Geralt answers. He tries to keep his eyes from directly landing on the small daemon, watching her from the corner of his eye among the other movements around the tavern. “They always go to dust, just like everyone else.”

“Even at a distance?” Dandelion asks.

“Yeah,” Geralt replies, shifting slightly. “Even then.”

“Oh,” Dandelion says with a gust of breath, likely thinking of sorceresses they have met in the past and the strange danger of their wandering daemons. What it would be like to have something terrible happened to them, so far away that one couldn’t even react. How a sorceress often had to live in that danger by nature of her existence. It’s a thing most don’t like to consider too closely. He’s quiet for a moment except for a tapping finger against the body of his lute. Daffodil in an instant shifts, body now a small round bird, and tucks herself in between his collar and neck.

Comforting each other. For a moment, Geralt looks away.

He doesn’t think of a time before the Path because he’s practiced and old. It’s been years and there’s not much left of him to miss such things.

Inhaling, Dandelion says with a burst of energy, “Well! Any ideas?”

“No,” Geralt says scratching his chin. “Don’t know of anything that would leave the daemons behind. There was a type of water ghoul that preferred to try to eat the daemon first but it’s been a century since one has been spotted.”

“Not that, I’m guessing?”

Geralt hums.

“Do you think,” Dandelion pauses, covers his mouth with his hand, “Do you think the people are still out there? Oh, that’s just too horrible to think about.”

If he was human, Geralt assumes he’d feel guilty for bouncing this off of Dandelion. People don’t think about the entirety of their daemon’s existence — it just exists as simple as breathing. Mortality is a shared experience for them.

It’s so unthinkable, to live without a daemon, even briefly. He wonders, in this moment, what he looks like to Dandelion. A pitiable monster, the witcher, existing without a daemon at his side.

Geralt’s lip curls for a moment before his face settles.

“What next?” Daffodil asks.

“Look around more,” Geralt replies. “Do you want to come along? Thought I’d go try and look where they were found.”

“Oh. No, definitely not, darling. I think I’m quite alright sitting back for this one if you don’t mind.”

That’s fair, Geralt thinks. Better. Until he knows what is causing this, it's safer to keep them away. Geralt is many ugly things but he’s not a man to risk a friend.

“Anyway! Lots to do in good ol’ Vizima for a bard like yours truly,” Dandelion says with renewed enthusiasm. “I have a few parties to play already planned, and some ears I’d like to bend since this sounds like it might take a while. Are you going to stay here with me in the meanwhile? The room might not be large but there is always space for you, darling. Plus, nightly baths which you might already be due for. Honestly Geralt how do you do that...”

In the corner of his eye, Geralt watches the innkeeper watch him as he half listens to Dandelion’s prattle. They have never really left the room since the witcher had entered, finding any excuse to stick around. Their mastiff daemon lays just around a corner, it’s black eyes helping keep watch. They are waiting for a chance to throw him out, any little excuse.

Geralt shakes his head, “I’ll find a place to bed down outside the city walls.”

“If you are sure,” Dandelion says with a small frown.

“Mm.”

“Well!” Dandelion jumps from the table, dramatic in every movement. He steps in close to pat a flat palm against Geralt’s arm a few times before gripping it tightly. It’s a comforting pressure, one that Geralt appreciates each time. “I shan’t be too hard to find should you have need of me, dear. I hope we can head towards Oxenfurt when this is done. I think a winter semester is in order this year.”

Geralt nods, it’s getting to that time of year.

As Dandelion turns to deal with his lute, carefully setting it back into its case, Daffodil shifts into a small ferret, body long and almost falling over his shoulder before her little claws cling tight. She looks straight at the witcher, eyes round and a deep blue. Her voice is high and excited when she squeaks out, “There’s a witcher in the temple quarter!”

“Oh yes! Nearly forgot, thank you dear heart,” Dandelion pets a hand down her spine, smile all toothy. He clicks the clasps on his case before turning. To Geralt he says, “Around the Hairy Bear he was last seen. Maybe treating himself to the lovelies at the Eager Thighs, you know how people talk about lecherous witchers and all that nonsense. Was seen quite recently from what I heard, within the last week or so. Think it might be one of your guildmates?”

Wondering who it could be, Geralt leaves.

-

There’s no witcher at The Hairy Bear. Or no other witcher at least. Just drunks that stare at him with watery, bloodshot eyes.

He considers the whore outside of the brothel for a moment, not to look inside for the rumored witcher either. But despite the inviting tilt of her hips, she smells sour with fear and her daemon’s ears are pinned back at the sight of him. 

Not worth it for the little coin he has.

-

Dusk is creeping up by the time Geralt makes it to the where the bodies were found. The fence that borders the field is in poor repair, easy to step around. While a house sits nearby, for once no one eyes him from the relative safety of those walls. The bank down to the river is shallow, almost non-existent.

The spot is obvious, the dirt disturbed in a small patch.

Scratching his chin, he walks a wide half circle around that spot. There’s footprints, of course, in the soft dirt of the river shore and surrounding area but all of them are from nervous onlookers, the closer the more clustered and overlapping they are. The paw prints he can see are all too big to be from the dead daemons. Either animal inspecting for themselves or daemons of the still living.

He crouches down, digs his fingers into the dirt. It’s damp and soft, it rained recently. When he closes his eyes and inhales. Dirt, of course, sweat from those who gawked and shuffled about. Tang of the grass that had been cut up close by. But under of that—

“Celandine, bit of hemlock,” Geralt tilts his head, considering, “Sweets? No, sweetbread.”

Opening his eyes, he breathes.

“Too long ago to get a trail. They were here for a few days, maybe a week before anyone found them. Washed up out of the river? Dried a bit before it rained.”

He rubs his fingers together, feeling the slight grit of the dirt even through his gloves. While the ground is disturbed, it’s obviously from the act of picking up the bodies. They didn’t wither and writhe here. They suffered but it had not been in this place.

He looks at the water, watches how it flows. It’s not a fast moving river overall, winding calming around the city and onwards towards the swamps. There’s no telling how far they could have traveled in the current before they found the way to shore. How they all stayed together, he’s not sure. Where they alive for a while before entering the water, did they hold onto each other?

In the distance there’s the cry of a real bird. Still more questions than answers. This work is not worth what he’s been offered in pay, not by far.

-

That night he decides to just meditate in the nearby house. It’s been abandoned for a while, smelling thick with dust with the undertone of damp rot. The signs that someone lived in it long gone and wiped away, either picked clean by opportunists or by family not wanting to leave even the most basic of furniture behind.

It’ll do to pass time.

He lays out his bed roll, kneels down. At the top of his bag is a small wrapped bundle, one he has learned to keep tucked deeper down so that stays safe in his travels. Geralt picks it up now, gentle and slow, pulling the cloth apart like unwrapping the gift all over again. He smiles, fond across the years and through the dulling of all his mutations.

In his palm is a wooden carved wolf, pudgy and crude. The years haven’t been kind to it, part of the right ear is chipped, it’s tail threatening to go missing. Once it had four legs, now only three. It was made with more care than skill.

Geralt strokes a finger over it’s uneven back. Sets it down in front of him carefully, making sure it sits steady on the remaining legs. Shifting slightly, he lays his hands palm up on his legs, breathes deep.

It can watch over him. Keep him safe.

-

“Master witcher!” 

The man that finds him in the morning is wild eyed, breathing hard. Obviously having ran a good distance to try and find him while Geralt was just trying to get something to eat. In no time, he’s standing close, grabbing onto his jerkin and yanking, trying to pull Geralt from where he’s sitting.

Geralt doesn’t want to move, he hasn’t eaten in over a day, not since they arrived in Vizima. He’s hungry. “What.”

“Master witcher, please,” the man begs, tugging again. Close but far enough to stay out of reach is the man’s daemon, dancing back and forth. It’s a deer, all long legs and wide prey eyes. “There’s been another.”

Sighing, he lets himself be led.

Down by the curve of the river with the bridge leading into the temple quarter in sight, he is brought to a commotion. More people than he would have expected at once, all milling about and in the way, whispering to each other loud enough for each word to be heard, and many rank with fear. There’s a metallic undercurrent of anger in a few, men and women looking to make an answer rather than find one at the smallest allowance. A witcher would certainly suit their needs, and would satisfy the desire to find the monster in this situation.

At the center of it all is a wailing woman on her knees, who he assumes is her husband trying to console her. Her sobs shake her small frame and she rocks back and forth. The man presses his face against her neck and shoulders, grieving just as much while trying to give solace.

In front of them is a body, that of a rabbit. It’s fur is dark, it’s body still.

Geralt breathes in deep. Holds it. Then exhales.

He walks forward on heavy feet, making his presence known as he moves towards the pair. The man sees him, mouth in a tight line. The woman bows down completely, digs her forehead against the ground just inches from the body.

Crouching down he makes eye contact with the man for a minute, keeping his face neutral. It’s the closest he can get to expressing sympathy and as always it’s misunderstood, the man’s face reddening with offense.

“You fu—”

“You knew them?”

“Izzy Izzy,” the woman weeps.

The man turns his head, rubs his hand over her back in circles. “Our daughter, he was our daughter’s.” The man’s throat clicks as he swallows, brief anger forgotten as a new wave of sorrow washes over him like a rip tide wave, dragging him deep and far from shore. Fitting. “He’d only just settled a few months ago.”

“Izzy, my baby,” the woman cries, “Oh.”

Geralt looks down at the body. Like the ones before, it’s emancipated, thin. It’s fur is thinner than it should be but it’s not as twisted in pain. Again, there’s no sign of wounds or trauma, at least no signs he can see. Whatever had happened, it had not been as bad as the ones before it. He doesn’t say anything about that though, he’s long learned what facts humans are comforted by in situations like these (none).

“When was the last time you saw her?” He asks instead.

“Izzy,” the woman moans.

“Just after he settled,” replies the man. His eyes are looking towards the body but not seeing anything. Likely remembering things. “He settled and I said. I said ‘you’re getting so grown girl.’ I said. I said ‘you need to start thinking ‘bout a trade.’ I said,” his voice chokes at this moment, overwhelmed. “I said, ‘you be better than you da.’”

The man cries.

He inhales. There again is that smell, celandine with a bit of hemlock. It’s vaguely medicinal, like a hospice but not quite. He can’t put a finger on what it reminds him of. 

There’s too many people though, too already moving about and muddying up the trail.

“Oh,” the woman breathes roughly.

“She’d got an apprenticeship. In the city,” the man continues, having gathered himself again. “Was so proud. She’d been sending money back, least once a week. We just got…”

Geralt blinks and looks up sharply before remembering himself. Until just recently they have received something from someone who they thought was their daughter, but all signs on the body show long term neglect or stress.

“Where was she apprenticed?”

-

His stomach is really rumbling by the time he gets to the bakery, the slight pain of hunger just enough to be annoying. The building the bakery is in is old, sat on a street corner within eyesight of the slums. He has no luck asking inside though, not for information or even getting just a little something to eat. The owner, a squat, sharp faced woman with a crow daemon sat on her shoulder had looked down her nose at him despite being a full head and a half shorter than him. “No witchers,” she said meanly, “We don’t serve your kind” before kicking him out.

Inside the shop, his medallion had vibrated in warning, the smell of ozone stuck to the woman.

Magic.

That’s why he crouches down in an alley nearby and resolves to wait. Something about that bakery isn’t right, maybe something that could explain the bodies that have been found. The woman was probably a witch of some sort, maybe even a trained sorceress. A strange place to find one but long lives can lead to a lot of boredom. He’s familiar with that.

“Wolf.”

Geralt jumps a bit, too focused on his thoughts and watching the store to have noticed anyone approaching. Standing a short distance away, hands on hips, is a man who doesn’t smile though the left corner of his mouth twitches — face obviously still stiff from the scars that mark the right side of his face and cut through his lip. Geralt’s stomach hurts from the sight of it but despite that, the sight of him is almost unbearably good.

“Eskel,” he breathes.

Eskel spreads his arms, palms out and welcoming. Geralt is quick to get to his feet, ignoring the ache of his knees to step forward and embrace him. Both their arms go tight around each other and their bodies press close. He grips the belt holding Eskel’s swords, presses his forehead against the collar of his jacket and for a moment things are still and peaceful. Greedly he wants it to stay that way.

But it’s over too soon, both pulling back. Eskel grips his shoulders, squeezing. “Been too long.” His eyes at least are still able to smile, crinkling at the corners.

“Not that long,” he argues.

The look Eskel gives him makes him laugh.

“A few years,” he admits.

“A few years,” the other witcher agrees. “Haven’t been back to the keep in winter since—” he stops, muscle in his cheek jumping. It must cause some pain, he sucks some air through his teeth before dropping his hands. His eyes glance away and back again. “Well, what are you up to here?”

“Job,” he replies, titling his head towards the bakery. “You?”

Looking to where Geralt pointed, Eskel rubs at the scars on his face, fingers pausing to press hard at the one that ends just below his eye. “Passing through. Heard there was a gryphen just north of here. Stopped to resupply when I heard there was a witcher spotted around The Hairy Bear and here you are.”

Before Geralt can respond, his stomach gurgles.

Eskel laughs, eye crinkling further. “You really don’t change, wolf.”

-

Over a watery ale and stew he’s not entirely sure someone didn’t spit in when they asked for a couple bowls, Geralt describes what he’s found so far. Eskel listens quietly, nodding every so often.

“Could be a fossegrim, maybe,” Eskel scratches at this face, thinking. “Though I’m sure all accounts describe them as going for the daemons first before eating the dead human. That and all the bestaries claim that the last one seen was about a century ago.”

“Hm.”

“Think it’s closer to home?”

Nodding, Geralt pushes his empty bowl away. Across from him, Eskel’s bowl is still half full, and without a word it’s pushed over. A silent argument starts and stops in a moment before he digs into that as well.

Eskel leans back, knocks his fist against the table twice. “What are they paying you for that?”

Geralt grimaces, “One hundred.”

“Wolf.”

Hiding behind his mug, Geralt mutters, “No one else was going to look into it.” 

It’s easy to still hear the instructors shouting from across the years insisting that they always get fair pay or ignore the job entirely. A witcher doesn’t work for free, the job of a witcher should always be paid its dues. Get coin to bring back, support the guild and the training of new witchers. 

But there’s no new witchers and no guild anymore, just a few witchers clinging to a broken keep.

Sighing, Eskel leans forward again, tilts his head. “Want some help?”

Geralt looks at him.

“Don’t have any contracts waiting on me, just a rumor that might not even be true. Or it could be dead already! Who knows these days. Rumor could be just a small gryphon, a militia could definitely take one out.”

“Not enough coin for two witchers,” Geralt points out.

“Got enough to keep myself fed. This close to winter, I’m just gathering extra for supplies to take up the mountain. What do you say, like old times?”

Geralt knows the answer should be no. Once it was just him and Eskel, those early years on the Path when they were new and inexperienced. But then the keep was attacked and sacked, witchers almost burned from existence. It was too selfish to work and travel together, not when the world was so wide and the beasts were ever hungry at people’s doors. The memory is an ache under his rib, the desire a lump in his throat.

The answer should be no.

“Wouldn’t hurt,” he says instead.

-

How easy it was to slip into the bakery was almost insulting. The two of them had watched the building silently for the opportunity, watching customers come and go. Eventually, nearing dusk the owner stepped out, locking the door behind her. Likely leaving for errands to be run now that the business of the day is done.

The inside of the bakery is small for two men of their size but they move in an almost practiced dance. Neither getting in the others way as they move about to examine this or that. Occasionally one will brush a hand against the other, something Geralt craves each time a pass occurs and it doesn’t happen.

“Scratches here, on the floor,” Eskel points out, voice low. He moves to feel along the wall, but doesn’t seem to find any seams.

“Notes here, recipes? Encoded though,” Geralt hums as he squints.

“Definitely get a bit of that celandine. Look, it’s in a pot here. Been handled a lot, someone picking it regularly.”

They go on like that, each commenting on a detail that seems out of place. Nothing adds up enough to be helpful though, all the details too vague to act on. 

The woman could be connected, from the smell alone, but he’s not sure entirely how. There’s no space in the bakery to keep grown humans and their daemons on this level. He can’t see basement access and he doubts the upstairs living area is more than a small loft.

Geralt is starting to think this is another dead end when he looks up and stills. From the corner of his eye, he can see Eskel notice from where he’s knelt studying a low shelf, turning his eyes to follow. He shifts to stand slowly, keeping his eyes locked.

High on a shelf, almost completely hidden in shadows if not for witcher eyes is a crow. The owner’s daemon, staring down at them with beady eyes.

“Wolf,” Eskel hisses.

The daemon spreads its wings, Geralt stands watching it, feeling something lock in his spine, his feet stuck in place as if they were glued. _A spell_ , he thinks madly, he’s caught in a spell and trapped for when the owner comes back to find him. Then who knows what when it comes to sorcessesses. His mind whirls though worse and worse scenarios from jail (again) to something not far from the trails, agonizing moments that felt like whole years. If his heart could, it would thunder in his chest.

He’s forgotten about Eskel in that moment only to be reminded when the other grabs his arm and pulls. Together, they stumble (Geralt) and run (Eskel) from the building, keeping pace until they are out of the city walls.

-

“Never a dull moment with you around, wolf,” Eskel breathes, hands on hips and stretching his back.

“That was not my fault.”

The answering laugh is not much more than a huff of air.

“It’s not,” Geralt protests.

When he looks over, Eskel’s face would be to someone else the mask of neutrality, carefully blank and void of emotion. But to an eye trained by days long ago, the slight lines where his eye crinkles and his lip tucks up is as obvious as the sun. It’s almost the same look he’d get after a good prank, when the instructors were spitting mad and trying to think what to do with them.

Almost.

The twist of the scar makes his stomach queasy. He has to look away.

“Any idea where to go from here?”

“Hm,” he crosses his arms and considers. He looks out into the distance and watches the trees sway in the wind. They’ve stopped beside the fence of an animal pen and unfortunately are standing downwind. “She’s definitely a sorcesses with a daemon like that rather than a hedge witch or someone who studied a bit of magic for fun. And she knew someone might want to take a look around, could mean she knows there’s something suspicious to see.”

“Doesn’t mean she has a hand in your mystery.”

Geralt just nods.

The facts are all twisted in his head, too many questions and no answers. Almost from the outside of himself, he watches them swirl round and round, water going down a drain. Slipping through his fingers when he tries to grab hold.

Damn, he’s really been spending too much time with Dandelion.

“Well!” Eskel says, cracking his knuckles. “Not much to be done about this right now. How about we make a fire, maybe things will be clearer in the light.”

-

Across the light of the fire, Eskel’s eyes lose their yellow hue and are just reflective disks as he shifts about, digging something from his pack. Bottles clink, papers russell and Geralt only affords it half attention as he unbuckles his own swords and sets them and his pack beside himself. The world is quiet outside of the pop of the fire, the cries of distant animals and the movement of the wind.

Eskel grunts, pulling out a couple pieces of jerky from some pocket. He tosses one over. “The answer to all of this is obviously fire,” Eskel comments, digging sharp teeth into his piece.

“That doesn’t solve anything.”

Shaking a finger, Eskel says with determination, “Fire can solve everything if you are determined enough.”

Geralt laughs, an ugly bark of a sound.

They share a moment of quiet companionship. It’s something he hadn’t been aware he missed until now. The last few years, he’s usually had Dandelion at his side and while it’s been good, Dandelion tends to live with his thoughts always in song, speech or written words. There’s always something to hear, from the bard himself to Daffodil’s own harmonies. There’s rarely a moment like this, of just knowing the other person without a word. Of breathing almost in sync, of existing without the need for anything else.

He breathes and thinks of another time, of a small body pressed against his skin and looking into a pair of brown eyes. Before that trial, before—

He breathes, flexes his hands.

If Eskel notices, he does him the courtesy of not commenting.

“Think you’ll be going back to the keep this year?” Eskel asks after a while, eyes half closed and watching the fire.

“Was considering it. Dandelion wants to spend his winter in Oxenfurt and if I have to listen to academics prattle on again for a whole season arson might really be the solution.” Geralt frowns at the fire, wishing for a stick to poke it a bit. Something to do with his hands.

“That where you’ve been these last few years, shacked up with your bard?” Eskel’s tone is carefully neutral but there’s a note of accusation there. A thread of hurt sewn between the words.

“He’s not _my_ bard, he’s my friend,” Geralt argues. “And it was just that last one. The one before that I found a cottage to hole up in.” It had been a shit winter, cold and hard to hunt. He had spent a lot of time just trying to sleep the time away, curled up under his meager blankets and the few furs he’d gathered from hunting. It had been a winter without a horse to worry about at least but extremely lacking in any subsistence. He’d scared quite a few villagers in the spring, walking into their towns looking gaunt and even paler than usual.

The look Eskel gives him beneath a quirking eyebrow says he knows exactly how that winter went.

“Why, did you miss me?” Geralt says, trying for humor. He twists his mouth into a grin, showing more sharp teeth than he would around anyone else.

Eskel drops his eyes. “Always do miss you, wolf,” he says, voice serious. He picks up a stick to poke the fire, making the flames grow that bit higher between them.

The fire pops.

Still staring down, stoking the fire more. “Should come just to shut Lambert up, he’s been betting with everyone that you’ve gone and bit it doing something dumb. Coen was there last year, think he bought into it.” He huffs a laugh to himself, lips trying to curl upwards despite themselves. Then, quietly Eskel asks, “Come to the keep this winter.”

When Eskel looks up, there’s something shining out from his eyes that Geralt hasn’t seen in years. Maybe something he has been avoiding seeing, too scared to put a name on it.

“Yeah,” he says around the tightness in his throat. “Yeah, I will.”

-

In the terrible tradition of the last few days, he’s led to a body in the morning. This time, however, it’s not another daemon for him to puzzle at.

It’s human.

Isolde or Isolt is the one to do the leading again. She’s pale and sick looking when she gets their attention in the early sunlight, standing wringing her hands and trying not to make any eye contact. When he sees the body, he doesn’t really blame her.

It’s just off of the bridge leading into the trade quarter, floating calmly the shallow edges. The current must have pushed it back towards the shore instead of dragging it out into deeper waters, both fortunate and horrible.

Wordlessly, they both scale down towards it, stepping into the water to drag it more onto solid ground. The body is stiff but the flesh still has some give to it, soft and spongy beneath their hands from the water.

“Think it’s related?”

“Don’t know,” Geralt says as he stands overlooking the body now that it’s laid out on land, “Worth checking though.”

Eskel kneels close, “Hm. Male, maybe 20? 30 at the oldest.”

“How long?”

“Recent. Less than a day but not by much. Not much decay, animals haven’t even found him yet.”

“Skelliger.”

“Yeah?” Eskel looks up at him, eyes amused. “Can you tell which clan?”

“No, they all look the same to me,” Geralt says, crossing his arms and frowning. He can sometimes tell who is what clan when he can see their chests and tartans but only when he spends a lot of time on the islands.

Snorting, Eskel says, “That sounds pretty bad, wolf.”

“Shut up.”

Eskel makes a huffing sound, laughter while trying to keep his face still. Eyes turned back to the body, Eskel picks at the shirt, running his fingers along the embroidery at the collar. He rubs at his scars, thinking, before tucking some hair behind his right ear. “See this?”

“It’s a fisherman’s shirt.”

“Mm, someone really cared for this man.”

Geralt nods, looking up at the bridge for a moment before back at the body. A Skelliger in Vizima was unlikely to be just a merchant passing through, they were too far inland. That meant there was a good probability that whoever he was, someone came with him. Someone who loved him, someone who would grieve him.

“No daemon,” Eskel points out.

“Arguably, that’s normal.”

Eskel hums, crews on his lip.

Kneeling down, Geralt inhales. Celandine and hemlock again. A small undertone of fresh bread. They’d been where the daemons had been, recently as well. Both scents are stronger, recent and despite the water, trackable.

They look at each other before both looking at the sewer entrance nearby.

-

“Should have known, contract around a city, you always wind up in the sewers sooner or later.”

Geralt grunts and tries to breathe through his mouth unless necessary. It’s not dark enough that a Cat is needed but it’s still dim enough to be annoying. The trail winds them through the tunnels, deeper and deeper under the city. It’s hard to say where exactly they are under now without taking the time to map it out on paper — sewers tend to look the same whether it's for the rich or the poor. They have long since passed the areas where evidence could be seen of squatters though.

“What was your last sewer contract?”

“Really?”

“Got to distract myself,” Eskel says.

“Ziegel, in Novigrad.” 

They round a corner and it gets dimmer.

“Not going to give me more than that?”

Geralt looks over his shoulder, the other is just a shadow but he can see a glint of light off his teeth and the occasional reflection of his eyes. “You want a good story, should ask Dandelion. It was fat, smelled like shit.”

“Really.”

“What?”

“Nevermind,” Eskel says with a huff. “Mine was a water hag, she was grabbing people from drain holes in Hagge. Mostly children.” The other witcher stops talking and the only sound is the water running beside them and a distant murmur of the city above. “Wasn’t too pleasant when I found it, lots of little bones in the lair it’d made. I was only hired ‘cause of course some noble’s daughter went missing.”

“What happened?”

“Should just say I killed it, job done.” A pebble plonks into the water as Eskel kicks it. “Found her, got real lucky too. The hag must have just fed before it grabbed the girl and was just tucking her away for later. She was so scared, her daemon was so small, was certain they had gotten separated somehow. But they survived.” Eskel sniffs and then breathes loudly through his teeth.

Geralt nods. He can almost picture it, Eskel carrying the child out of the sewers, her arms clinging tight to him, her daemon clinging tight to her as far from him as possible. He can also picture how the parents grabbed the girl to pull her away, as if the witcher was as much to fear as the monster.

They continue on, the smell is getting just slightly stranger. More hemlock now then the celandine. Just as he starts thinking that they must be getting close they come across a body.

A daemon, shaped like a fox.

“Damn,” Eskel mutters.

Geralt’s crouches down beside it, trying to get the best look he can in the dim light. It’s body is just out of the water, he wonders if it clawed its way out before life left it entirely. There are scratches nearby, it’s a possibility. He tilts his head, “The fur on this one isn’t as patchy.”

There’s a metallic clang as Eskel rests the tip of his sword again the stone of the walkway. “Not starved this time?”

Geralt hums, flexing his hands before reaching out and picking the body up. He hears Eskel breathe heavily out. Again, there’s nothing from the body that gives his senses much to work with, though fortunately the scent doesn’t stop entirely with it. They still have somewhat a trail to follow.

“Anything?” Eskel asks, voice low.

“No. It’s, hm,” Geralt pauses, presses his lips together. He breathes through his nose, slowly. “Hard to describe.”

Eskel’s sword scraps a little against the ground as he shifts.

“I thought there’d be a sense of the person,” he admits. He lays the body back down, further from the water this time. He pulls a cloth from his pack and wraps it around the body. It’s not much, but it’s something. “You know, like when—” Geralt stops himself, keeps his eyes fixed away.

“That your only frame of reference?” Eskel says on an exhale.

Geralt stands, rolls his shoulders. “Yeah, you?”

For a moment, Eskel doesn’t say anything. It goes on long enough that Geralt has to look back at him as the other witcher shifts his weight before lifting his sword again to hold flat against his arm. He doesn’t seem anxious to say anything but it’s apparent.

People don’t like a witcher around their daemon. The only people who wouldn’t mind would be other witchers and no one has seen a witcher’s daemon out in the continent.

He looks at Eskel and Eskel looks back. 

“Com’on,” Geralt says, tilting his head.

Eskel nods and they move onwards.

As the trail twists and winds through the sewers the smell gets more intense and Geralt grunts in discomfort. They are getting close to something, something thick with rot and decay. Sure enough, as the area opens up to a junction, he catches a flash of white ahead.

Bone.

He draws his sword and the two of them move in different paths around the area. Eskel keeps on the walkway as Geralt jumps down to wade through the murky water. The water is almost knee deep at the worst and he tries not to think about it.

It was human, what they have found. The closer he gets, the more bits of bone he sees, gathered in a pile. Something found it, something that gathered it all together into one place at the shallow edges.

Something hungry.

Turning slightly, he lifts his hand to signal when something raises from the mire, a flash of sharp teeth and claws. He barely pirouettes out of the way in time, slowed by the depth of water he’s standing in.

A drowner, covered in almost everything the sewer has to offer.

“Shit you stink,” Geralt grumbles.

“Geralt!”

Claws catch his arm as another drowner pops up behind him and he jumps away. He whirls to face it as a blast of air hits the other one, swinging and cutting through it easily.

“You alright?” asks Eskel as he pulls his sword from the other drowner.

“Fine,” Geralt grunts.

Eskel nods, the attack over as quickly as it began. Now both in the water, they move closer to what might have been a body. Or a few bodies. There’s too many bones to be just one, many of them picked clean. Would explain why the drowners had been slow on the attack. They were well fed.

The pile sits in front of a door. Large and iron. By all appearances, made to only open into the sewers and not to be opened from them. As they probe it, there’s little to grip to and try to force it to work otherwise.

“Not a dead end,” Eskel comments.

“Almost though.”

“Such an optimist in your old age, wolf.”

“You're older than me,” Geralt mutters.

Eskel punches his arm lightly, “By a season!”

“Older is older,” Geralt says with a huff.

Eskel just snorts.

The door is thick from the sound of it when he knocks his knuckles against it. Even if he was to bring some bombs, he doesn’t carry the kind of firepower he’d need to get through it. Not knowing what's behind it, he’s hesitant to just throw a sign at it. Eskel’s igni would be strong enough, that’s for sure.

“We need to figure out where the other side of this is.”

-

It’s midday by the time they make it back out of the sewers. The Skelliger is long gone and there are signs that quite a few people had come to move him. Geralt wonders if any of the footprints was whoever came with him to Vizima, the one that had cared for him.

They are barely inside the gates of the city, when Dandelion appears in the way he sometimes does, as if from thin air and called by no one.

The bard is rosy cheeked and grinning, arms out to greet them before he stops short. Geralt raises an eyebrow at him, watching Daffodil’s form shivers before becoming a small humming bird and fluttering quickly around Dandelion’s head.

“Geralt!” He exclaims, looking from one of them to the other. “You found the other witcher I see! So pleased to meet you, I’m Dandelion the bard, who might you be good sir?”

“Eskel.”

“Eskel!” Geralt can’t place the look Dandelion gives him, eyes wide and shining with some kind of glee. It makes his hackles raise on principle and despite the frown Dandelion seems undeterred. Hand on his chin, Dandelion continues, “Eskel, so good to finally have a face to put to the name. Has anyone ever told you that you two look remarkably alike? Except for this hair, and I suppose your noses. And, hm…”

“The scar?”

“And yes, the scar. Sorry, didn’t wish to be rude,” Dandelion pauses. “Must be a good story, a scar like that.”

“It really isn’t,” Eskel says, his tone clear that’s all he wants to say about it.

Dandelion nods, understanding. Geralt is a bit insulted how easy the bard drops the subject, considering how pester he is at times. He watches Dandelion sniff and wrinkle his nose at them.

“Melitele, you two stink.”

Eskel snorts but keeps quiet.

“It’s not that bad,” Geralt argues.

“Don’t. You both need a bath, desperately,” Dandelion moves with a similar energy as Daffodil, shifting from one foot to another. Gesturing to tell them that they should, in fact, start following him. “In fact, I really have to insist, as forcefully as one can around you two. Let me organize it, in fact.”

“Really,” Eskel says so low that only Geralt can hear.

Geralt shrugs.

-

It’s not the first time Geralt wished he still had a daemon outside of himself to watch Dandelion argue down someone on his behalf.

They are of a similar height, though often the bard seems taller as he stands up straighter than the habitual hunch Geralt adopts. But when they are side by side, maybe due to the black of his clothes or the ugly expression he always wears, people mistake the poet for a small thing.

Until Dandelion talks of course.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Eskel press his lips together and cross his arms. 

After a lot of back and forth, Dandelion turns to them with a triumphant grin before they are quickly ushered up the stairs and into a bathing room. The room isn’t large and starts to feel crowded with two witchers and a bard in it on top of the fair sized tub. It’s not set into the ground like some places he’s seen but there is a pump and a drain — conveniences he doesn’t get to see often.

“Nice,” Eskel comments.

“Take your time darlings,” Dandelion says with a nod after turning the knobs, testing the temperature of the water against his wrist as if he was pouring a bath for a pair of babes instead. He moves to pat Geralt’s shoulder before thinking better of it, hand hovering in the air as his nose wrinkles. “Really, do take your time. Do a thorough job, for all our sakes.” 

Geralt snorts.

“I’ll be downstairs for a while,” Dandelion says as he turns towards the door to leave. “Come down and have a drink with me, I’d like to know how the work is going.” The door clicks behind him as he exits, leaving them alone with each other.

The two of them stand in silence for a moment before looking at each other, looking at the tub and back in tandem. Without a word, they both hold out a fist, shake three times before—

“Fuck.”

“Predictable, wolf.”

“Well, get on with it.”

Eskel huffs back a laugh before working on the clasps of his jacket, setting pieces of his kit down gently in the corner. Geralt busies himself by filling a nearby bucket — he might be second at the tub, but he can at least scrub off the worst of the grime before his turn. When he sets the bucket down beside a stool, Eskel is down to his smalls, back to him. Geralt is, for a moment, consumed by the differences the years have left on them both. The span of their shoulders have stayed the same, but Eskel has the kind of body Geralt should. The expanse of his back is both familiar and foreign and it hits him low and sharp.

He has to look away.

Geralt starts on his own jerkin as he listens to Eskel shuffle about behind him before a splash and a sigh. He smiles, small and to himself. 

When he pulls off his shirt, he pauses, staring at his arm. Hidden by the dark fabric is a sluggishly bleeding wound from the drowner. Shallow enough not to be too much of a concern but deep enough to be annoying. He pinches the skin together.

“Com’on, lets get that stitched.”

“It’s fine,” Geralt says, tossing his shirt down. He starts working on his pants, focusing on the buckles as he kicks off his boots.

“It’s still bleeding.”

“It’s fine.”

Water sloshes around and hits the floor. He listens to the other pad around the room before there’s a firm hand on his elbow. Eskel stands close, damp and dripping, hair down and stuck to the back of his neck. He’s holding a small bundle grabbed from one of their packs, a medical kit. Geralt’s eyes drop low to the curve of his stomach before firmly focusing on his jaw and the way the scar bisecting his lip upturns the line of his mouth.

“It’s fine,” Geralt repeats, voice low.

Eskel grunts in reply, grips a large hand around the ball of his shoulder and both pushes and pulls Geralt down to the stool close to the tub.

He doesn’t flinch when Eskel gets a damp cloth to wipe at the skin, making the wound a stark red gash against his pale, ghastly skin. Geralt breathes through his nose, his inhale probably sounding like him managing pain at the first pinch of the needle when really he’s lost in the difference in the sun-browned colour of Eskel’s hand against him.

It’s only a couple stitches before the thread is being cut. He expects the contact to end, but it stays for a moment longer, Eskel’s thumb rubbing his arm just below.

“You need to take better care of yourself, wolf,” Eskel says in a low rumble.

Geralt looks down at himself, seeing what others see. The concave of his stomach, the bumps of his ribs. He’s not been attractive since puberty, back when the two of them could have been mistaken for each other regularly. The gauntlet of the trails on top of the years spent missing meals have left him boney and pale like a starved ghoul, skin twisted and gnarled with scars.

“It’s fine,” he says.

Eskel sighs, hand squeezing his arm for a moment before releasing.

He ignores the lingering pressure, keeping his head down and focusing on washing off some of the grime clinging to his skin as he listens to the water of the tub splash and slosh about again.

“Been a while?”

“For a bath? A month.”

“Yeah?”

“Been, uh,” Eskel pauses as he does something, water sloshing around. His voice is slightly muffled when he continues, washing his face. “Been washing in any river or lake I can find.” He pauses and when he talks again, he’s not muffled anymore. “Last bath was in a whorehouse.”

“Fun night?” Geralt asks with a grin which fades when he looks over. The other witcher is looking away, mouth is turned down in a frown, more of an expression then he’s worn lately. 

“No,” Eskel answers.

“Eskel.”

“They, um.” For a moment Eskel doesn’t say anything, focusing on scrubbing at his arms and chest. “They just let me use their bath. This,” he motions towards his face, “has kind of been a deal breaker for a lot of people.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It kind of is, Geralt,” Eskel says with a huff, this laugh bitter. “Even you have been avoiding looking at them. You haven’t wintered at the keep since it happened. I know you,” he says and looks Geralt in the eye, “you did the same thing after Blaviken.”

Geralt breathes, staring at the scars on his cheek, bisecting his lip and eyebrow. The more he looks, the less he sees the ghost of the past, the more it feels like they were always there. There’s an irrational part of him that’s scared that he will forget the face of the boy he knew, grinning at him across the training field or their bunks and all he will be left with is the bloody visage and Eskel lying prone on the ground like the dead.

He knows he never will, the face though changed with time is the same. 

The words stay stuck in his throat though and the silence stretches between them.

Eskel sighs, rubbing a hand down his face before raising from the water. He’s quick, efficient in grabbing the bath sheet to dry himself. He stays turned away, pulling on his clothes, grabbing the bundle of his swords and pack. “See you downstairs,” he mutters.

-

“You really need to take better care of your man,” Dandelion says with his chin in his hand.

When he finally gets out of the bath and comes downstairs, there’s a good drinking crowd underway. A few of the particularly pickled ones are singing loudly some jingle he can’t make out, waving their mugs around and sloshing booze over the floor. Probably still high on whatever songs the bard was playing earlier. He’s seen it before.

Tucked in the corner sits Dandelion, legs crossed and turned towards the room, Daffodil on his shoulder. Head down on the table is Eskel, apparently dead to the world. He sits down carefully beside him and across from the bard.

“He’s not—” Geralt starts to protest.

“Oh of course not,” Dandelion interrupts. “There’s no one in the world that a witcher keeps, hm? A witcher needs no friends, hm? How funny, how funny. More importantly, you never told me you were once a redhead. I feel like that is a great offense to our friendship.”

“Who told you that?”

“Who do you think!”

Geralt hums and looks down at the man beside him. He hadn’t even bothered to tie his hair back again before coming down and it sits curling against his neck. Geralt’s fingers twitch, wanting a touch and when he looks up Dandelion is giving him a crooked and knowing smile.

“Shut up.”

Dandelion just laughs.

Knuckles against the table, he eyes the bottles sitting empty and tipped over as well as the nearest mug. He wasn’t in the tub long enough for the other witcher to drink the normal amount that it takes to get to such a state. Picking up the closest, he sniffs.

“When did you steal my white gull?”

“Oh, ages ago,” Dandelion says, examining his fingernails.

“Dandelion.”

“It was just a bottle, you didn’t even miss it!”

“I’ve been looking for it!” He growls, teeth bared and banging his fist against the table. Eskel still makes a small groan beside him. “It’s expensive!”

The bard just waves at him.

Geralt leans back, rubbing both hands down his face before crossing his arms. He glares, pressing his lips tight.

Eskel snores wetly beside him.

Leaning forward over the table, Dandelion says, “I was told something by a colleague in the ethology department that was very interesting.”

“Is that the guy who asked me if witchers had certain animal traits?”

“What? Who asked…” Dandelion trails off, frowning at him before waving off the conversation. “Probably just some student messing with you. Anyway, what I was saying was I was told something interesting by a colleague in the ethology department. Do you want to know what it was?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you what it was. Albinism in the wild is often a death sentence. It’s something many aren’t able to survive to adulthood, do you know why?”

“Are you sure this isn’t the guy who was super invested in whether or not I had a knot?”

“You’re disgusting, why do I keep you around, honestly.” Dandelion says with a laugh. “No! Listen, I have a very good analogy for you if you just listen for a moment.”

Geralt sighs but shuts his mouth.

“Thank you. Albinism is often a death sentence, especially in predators,” Dandelion says as if he’s leaturing, voice even without the usual musical highs and lows. “It makes it near impossible for them to hunt for food and very easy for them to be predated themselves, unable to blend into their environments. In fact, most albinos found in the wild are from animals who have a strong sense of community or strong relation to others, like wolves. Do you understand?”

“Certainly sounds like you are attributing animal traits to me.”

“He is far too smart to be this much of an idiot,” Dandelion says to Daffodil who just tweets back in agreement. The small daemon is in the form of a chickadee, sitting on the poet’s shoulder.

“Do you have a point?” Geralt asks.

“Do I have a point he asks,” Dandelion says to Daffodil who's next tweet sounds like laughter, throwing up both hands. To Geralt he says, “You are hard to live with sometimes, do you know that. Do I have a point!” With each word, his voice raises in volume and pitch.

Those nearest to them are eying them. Geralt hunches his shoulders higher.

Shaking a finger at him, Dandelion says, still much too loud, “You love him.”

“Dandelion,” Geralt hisses.

Lowering his voice, Dandelion leans forward over the table. “You do, that’s my point.”

Geralt breaths in.

“Don’t,” the bard warns.

Geralt breaths out, glancing down at Eskel’s head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Love always matters, Geralt,” Dandelion says softly. “Knowing you, you’ve never said anything and you tell yourself it’s better that you never do. Always the lone wolf, walking his path by himself.”

“It is,” he says, “Better.”

“I’ve known you only a few years, darling. You certainly can survive alone, you are very good at it. But you thrive around others, when you allow yourself to.” Dandelion leans back, mirroring his posture. “Well, I won’t argue with you on this, we’ll just spin in circles and frankly I have places to be.”

“Do you?”

“Oh yes, date with an old friend over in the royal quarter. You can have my room for tonight, I won’t be back until the morning at the earliest, later than that if I can help it,” Dandelion stands and stretches his arms above his head, spine popping. Daffodil flutters above his shoulder. “There should be enough oil still left in my bags should you need it.”

“Dandelion,” Geralt mutters, covering his face.

He looks up when Dandelion pauses beside him, patting his arm before giving it a squeeze. “Take better care of your man darling, you are allowed lasting things.”

Geralt doubts it but presses his hand against the bards for a moment, squeezes back.

-

It’s a journey getting Eskel up to the room. He’s hard to rouse and blurry eyed, staring up at Geralt with an expression he can’t place. He leans heavily onto his shoulder and they sway together slowly as they get upstairs. Eskel drops onto the bed like a lead weight and sits there for a moment, fist clutching Geralt’s shirt.

Just when he’s wondering if he should say something, Eskel drops back, dead asleep again.

Geralt sighs, looks about the room. It both smells and looks like Dandelion has been living here, perfume in the air, littered with clothes and papers laying everywhere. Fortunately, it doesn’t smell like the bard has had recent company, though he still opens the window anyway.

Pulling a chair into the corner of the room, within eyesight of both the bed and the door, Geralt settles down for the rest of the night. Folding his hands in his lap, he lets his mind drift.

-

“Fuck,” Eskel groans, sitting with his head in his hands.

Geralt hums in response, head down and focusing on his sword, wiping it down and checking for any nick or blemish. It’s just past dawn and downstairs he can hear the beginnings of people start to shuffle about doing whatever tasks they have.

“I’m still toxic,” Eskel drops one hand, looks over at him with an eye almost more red then yellow. “You got any white honey?”

Sliding his sword back into its scabbard, frowning. “Don’t you have any?”

Eskel grunts.

Geralt shrugs, turning his attention back to cleaning his gear, only partially listening to the other witcher move about the room, cursing as he bumps into things. He’s going to have to replace the belt he uses for his swords soon, the leather is getting worn and thin, the buckle loose and jangly. It’s just asking for the whole thing to come apart when he’s in some swamp or something, that’s just how his luck tends to go.

There’s a clink of bottles. Then, softly: “Wolf.”

Geralt looks up. In one hand Eskel holds a bottle, the other the small carved wolf.

Time stops or he wishes it does.

“I can’t believe you still have this,” Eskel says with a choked laugh. It’s small in his hand, cradled in his palm. There’s a spot of color high on his left cheek and crinkle to his eye. There’s something so unbearably fond in his expression when he looks up.

Geralt just stares back, an ache growing under his ribs.

He needs to get out of here.

Eskel’s fingers curl around the carved wolf. Geralt can see that sunny day from years ago, watching those same fingers hold the small block of wood as the knife carved away chunks. He can still hear the distant sounds of other trainees in the practice yard, can see the slight tail swish of Eskel’s daemon and feel his own daemon, small and tucked close against his body. He remembers the first weight when it was handed over, Eskel’s crooked grin while he stated that he finally had a wolf of his own.

“No,” Geralt says, jumping to his feet. The chair clatters to the ground and his sword hits the ground. He needs to leave, he thinks desperately. He needs to get out of here.

“Geralt,” Eskel sets both the bottle and figure down as he approaches, palms out.

His chest is tight, ribs too small to contain the beating of his heart in his chest. He needs to _leave_.

Eskel’s hands cup the balls of his shoulders, rubs his thumbs against the jut of bone there. He doesn’t say anything. Like many a time, he doesn’t need to say another for Geralt to _know_. It’s another silent conversation.

Geralt’s own throat hurts, his heart stuck there. He needs _out_.

Without a word, Eskel’s hands go slack. Geralt keeps his eyes down as he runs from the room, not even bothering to grab any of his gear.

-

Just outside of the city walls is the small stable where he left Roach. The owner eyes him when he stumbles into sight, her daemon in the shape of a small pony stamps it’s hooves at him. He shakes his head before she finishes breathing in to ask him anything, palming a few of his remaining coins into her palm. She eyes them with distrust before pocketing them and waving him along.

It smells strongly of hay and horse as he enters.

Roach is the furthest stall, as if to keep her away from a Zerrikanian bay a few down. She snorts at him, lips at his hand when he reaches out to pet her nose. It’s easy to slip into the small space with her. She’s well fed and clean — well worth the coin he’s spent.

Still, he settles into the rhythm of brushing her down, running his hands along her neck and flank, removing the small burrs that have gone unnoticed and smoothing the small knots from her mane. She stands calmly as he works, this Roach has been one of his best yet. Even tempered, hard to startle. He hopes that he has her for a long while.

 _You are allowed lasting things_ , Dandelion said.

Geralt presses his face against her neck and breathes. She stands steady, even curving into him.

Witchers aren’t meant for lasting things, he thinks. Swords break, armor destroyed, horses die, everything in the end passes, their names fade into obscurity, they are meant to keep nothing while walking the Path. People he meets are like snapshots in time. Lovers are brief evenings or affairs that burn out quickly.

Even Dandelion.

The bard comes and goes, he expects someday it will be the more the latter. 

Not much in his life has stayed the same, even his own face has changed from lean years to hard hunts. Even the place where he holds the most memories is a shell of what it was.

The only thing that stayed the same has been—

He breathes. Stands back. Strokes her neck one once more.

“I’m a fucking idiot,” he tells her. 

Roach whinnies at him, probably agreeing.

-

The thing that most people don’t know — because there’s no way they can know — is that during training it’s not uncommon for their daemons to mostly be in the form of their school. A witcher’s daemon never settles, they never get a chance to, and rarely do they ever have a name anyone uses but due to the nature of the training they stay in one shape more often than not. The training is meant to mold them and that shows in the most obvious way possible.

It wasn’t unusual to see wolves around Kaer Morhen.

Outside, he’s never seen a wolf daemon. Occasionally a dog large enough that at a glance it could almost be mistaken but not a wolf. He’s not sure why that is, the personalities of training witchers weren’t really all that different, not really.

That’s why his mind goes blank when he stumbles into one on his way back into the city.

No one has noticed it yet, tucked away in an alley in the market quarter near the slums, the same alley he’d used to stake out the bakery just a day before. Passers probably thought it a dog whose luck had run, not an uncommon sight in the city.

Another dead daemon with no sign of their person anywhere.

He approaches it slowly, something sitting sharp in his gut at the sight. It’s fur is dark brown and short, not matted but in no way like the wolves he’s seen in the wild. There’s something unnatural in how it looks, something he can’t quite place.

 _It can’t be,_ he thinks with his hand over his mouth. It’s impossible, but he’s staring at it and in some way—

It looks like Eskel’s daemon did, all those years ago.

He kneels beside it, reaches out to run a hand along it’s body, the same motion he did years ago. The fur is soft beneath his hand and a bit damp. He can’t tell how long it’s been here but it can’t be long, laying in the spot he crouched not long ago. 

It’s not familiar in the way he’d expect though and he feels relieved.

There’s a sharp caw and he looks up. Staring down at him is the beady eyes of a crow.

“Fuck,” he says.

Then, darkness overwhelms him.

-

He wakes up and immediately misses being unconscious, the quiet bliss before the aches of his body make themselves known.

He’s alive, he supposes that’s preferred.

Keeping his eyes closed, he takes stock of his body. His skull feels a size too small and there’s a tingle in his sinuses. Knocked out more by magic than head trauma then, better for him in the long run, likely to pass faster. His gut is also unsettled, stomach churning in a familiar way that's not quite nausea but close. Considering that his hands are tied and he’s laying on some type of stone, the fact he had been portaled is the worst insult of it all.

Opening his eyes, he assesses in his surroundings. It’s dim, lit by candles that have burned a little too low. Stone walls. Damp, underground he assumes, he can hear the sounds of the city but far away and faint. He inhales, they are close to the sewers from the smell. The other side of that iron door, he’d guess.

Rolling his head, he looks around. He’s elevated, tied down on some type of table or slab. Along the far wall are empty cages, some small, at least one large enough to hold a grown human. There’s a table across from him, with books stacked high, papers hanging over the edge. Sat at it is a figure, a woman with her back turned towards him, writing something with a feathered quill.

He tests how his hands and feet are tied, all bound down at wrist and elbow, knee and ankle. Tight enough that there’s a numbness spreading to his fingers. He could conceivably form an igni if he really needed to but he’d have to deal with burns for a while.

For the moment, he’ll wait.

He glances to the opposite wall and jolts. Sat there is a man, dark haired, eyes pointed down, dressed in a simple shirt and pants. It’s hard to judge age in the dim light and the distance, harder still as his skin looks stretched over his bones, more grey than pink. There’s something familiar about how he’s positioned, how his shoulders are held even though relaxed. Around his neck is a medallion.

It’s a witcher.

Geralt breathes out through his teeth.

“Don’t bother him,” she says, head still down and focused on what she is writing. “He’s sleeping.”

Geralt eyes how the man breathes, how there’s a pause before each inhale, how each exhale goes fast. He’s breathing, but not under his own power. The heartbeat he hears is slower than it should be, sometimes jolting and giving an irregular beat every so often.

He knocks his skull against the table. “What the fuck.”

“Quiet,” the woman says sharply. There’s the sound of wood against stone as she stands, the soft clop of her heels as she walks over. She’s standing over him in the next moment, the angle he has to look up at her nose unpleasant. Of course it’s the woman from the bakery, of course. “You witchers are more trouble than you are worth. You’re going to bother my son.”

Geralt is tempted to yell.

“Looks dead, your son,” he says instead.

Her lips pucker. “He’s sleeping! He’ll wake once I fix him.”

“Fix him? Of what, he’s catatonic at best. He’s probably past helping now.”

“Of being a witcher, of course! He’s just sleeping for a moment, just a moment!” There’s a slight mania in the woman’s voice, a desperation, all matching the white of her eyes as she stares down at him.

Geralt sighs. “Fuck, you’re crazy.”

She slaps him with surprising strength, rings on her hand clipping into his skin. His head doesn’t really have far to go, so he lets his head lay to the side, flexing his jaw. When he looks back at her, her face is flushed with anger which only gets deeper the longer he looks at her.

“You don’t understand!” She shrieks, stepping away. “You can’t, you're all twisted like the rest of your kind. They stole him from me, when he was little. I’ve studied for years, just to save him. Help him.”

“Looks like you’ve done a great job so far.”

“You—”

“Why the dead daemons then?”

She steps back into view, holding a candle. Her nose twists at him in disgust. There’s a click of claws and when he raises his head just a little, he can see her crow daemon sitting at the end of the slab, staring at him with those same beady eyes.

“Because witchers don’t have daemons,” she answers. “Everyone knows that. I sought to give him one. Make him whole again.”

“By separating people from theirs?”

“By removing people from theirs so he could have a proper daemon.”

Geralt presses his eyes closed, breathes in deep through his mouth, trying to calm down. “How would that even help? He had a daemon already, all witchers do. They are on the inside.” He pauses, pieces coming together in his head. “You knew he had one, you separated him from his!”

“It had to be defective,” she says.

“It’s still a daemon!” He shouts, yanking at the bonds holding him down.

“It had to be defective,” she repeats. Her eyes are beady and a bit wet, emotional. The closer she stands, the more he smells the celandine and hemlock on her. “I had to remove it so that I could give him a proper daemon. I had to remove it!”

Geralt turns his head and stares at the ceiling. “Fuck, you’re really crazy.”

“I’ll show you,” she says as she steps away, back towards the desk. 

As the sound of jars and papers moving increases, he realizes that he might have gone about this all wrong. Until now, he hadn’t thought to worry about whatever was separating the daemons from their people could be used against him. The trial of dreams was meant to ensure that — a witcher wouldn’t be able to survive the Path with their daemon on the outside. 

He pulls at the bonds, harder and harder. There’s no give, his arms are tied down too tight.

As he’s forming igni, the crow squalls loudly and his fingers go limp. He feels a numbness spreading from his neck down his body until even his toes in his boots don’t answer his commands.

Breathing through his teeth, he begins to worry.

From the corner of his eyes, he sees the candle flames flare up, the room suddenly brightly lit. The only thing he can do is turn his head. She’s staring at him, eyes shining an unnatural color, a sharp blade in her hand.

“Do you know how intercision works?”

Geralt says nothing.

“I studied the Maystadt process closely after the witchers took him from me. I’ve heard the tales of what happens to boys the witchers take, I knew they were going to do it to him. I wanted to know how it was done, understand it so I could use it to fix him. The principle was simple to learn and it was insulting how easy it was to acquire a scalpel.” Her speech is calm, she has the same cadence of every sorceress who thinks everything is going her way.

It mostly is, but still.

“I practiced a bit, before I found him. It took a while, but I got very good at it. The challenge was getting the daemon to survive afterwards. All the documentation focused on the human, but the human was always useless for my goals. Of course I had to figure it out myself. Once I did, I just had to find him, my poor son.”

She steps up close, he keeps his eyes on her but his lips pressed shut. Her head tilts up as she stares down at him, holding the blade more into the light. The sharp edge catches the light. He can’t tell what exactly it's made of, it looks like something between damascus and silver.

“In the end, it was all terribly simple,” she says, then stabs him in the side between his ribs.

Geralt grunts, pained.

For a moment, all he feels is the blade in his side, an ache radiating through his insides as muscles clench in preparation to fight back despite his paralysis. Then there is a tingling, starting around the knife and spreading outwards, his medallion rattles against his chest. It’s slow, apparently too slow for her as she twists the blade, a pained groan gets trapped behind his teeth.

Then there’s something bright, sitting on top of him, right above where his heart is located. It’s shape is hard to make out, but as he turns his eyes to it he knows what it is with a punch to his gut. He can see two green eyes stare back at him, no longer just a washed out and distant memory.

His daemon. Her body is still so small. She had always preferred to be small.

His lips part.

The moment stretches on for a short eternity, lasting only seconds, before a fury of sound and heat rings out. The iron door that led out to the sewer blowing open, banging loud against the wall, barely staying on its hinges.

She yells something he doesn’t quite hear, yanking the blade from his side.

The shape disappears, he feels an ache but not a loss.

He turns his head to see Eskel charge in through the opening, sword drawn and ready. His hand is still raised, index finger curled with the others out searched. As she rounds the slab to face him, he hits her with a quick short blast, making her stumble back.

The blade clatters as it hits the ground and from where he’s laying, he can’t see what is happening.

The crow caws, wings flapping.

Part of the spell holding him down must release as he feels his fingers curl. He renews his effort of pulling at the bonds, struggling to get free.

He gets a single hand free just as he hears her shriek. He whips his head to look, seeing Eskel standing over her body. She’s crumpled down beside where her supposed son sat, her son that has moved just enough to grab something to stab at her. One last gasp of movement left in his body now expired.

Right in the center of where her heart would be is the blade.

Eskel steps back, sword still ready as the two of them slump over. It’s quiet quite suddenly, two heartbeats slowing to a stop.

“Are they?” Geralt asks anyways.

“Yeah,” Eskel breathes out in answer.

Geralt lays back himself, breathes for a moment, staring at the ceiling. His side hurts but it’s just another scar rather than the end of him. Even he has to admit that’s pretty lucky.

He sits up again as much as he can, starts working on his other hand. From the corner of his eye, he sees Eskel start working at getting his legs free. Between them, it’s short work.

Once free, he wastes no time wrapping arms tight around the other witcher. The two of them embrace tightly, foreheads against one another. When they start to pull back, Geralt cups his hands around his jaw and leans back in, pressing a light kiss against his top lip over the scar that marrs it as a question.

Eskel answers, mouth open as he kisses back. He can feel the sharpness of his teeth against his tongue, how their lips stick against each other. It’s amazing, how easy they fit against each other, as if they always knew how to do this.

Drawing back, Eskel huffs, mouth quirking upwards. “You’re such an idiot sometimes wolf. Always getting hurt,” he says, hand pressing against the wound as if to hold him together, keep him safe.

“Yeah,” Geralt agrees and kisses him again.

-

They drop Dandelion off in Oxenfurt, the trees along the way are starting to threaten changing color, a chill on the wind warning of a long winter.

With the gates behind him, Dandelion makes him swear his usual promise to meet in the spring. “In Ban Gleann, of course. In that charming little tavern, you remember the place. You’ll be there, won’t you darling? Both of you hopefully.”

He nods, because it’s always best to just go along with Dandelion than to argue.

Then, northward they continue.

It’s a comfortable journey, occasionally stopping to do a contract. Sometimes together, but often they will go in different directions, before coming back together and moving on.

It’s easy, how the companionship is, how less long and winding the Path seems.

As the blue mountains come into view, he has to pause, pulling Roach to a halt. Geralt sits back in the saddle, just taking it in. Eskel pulls his horse up beside, his eyebrow quirked up at him when he looks.

“You alright there, wolf?”

“Fine,” Geralt grunts.

Huffing a laugh, Eskel leans in, gripping a hand on his sword belt to pull him closer. The kiss he tries to land misses the mark, landing at the corner of his mouth. Geralt snorts, uses a hand against a scarred cheek to redirect, kiss soft and light on dry lips.

“Com’on,” Eskel says fondly as he pulls away, “I want a bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I can be found at both [tumblr](https://midzilla.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/midzilla) most of the time. Unfortunately, I am very boring.
> 
> I drew several pieces of art for this while writing it! They are:  
> [daemon AU living rent free in my head](https://midzilla.tumblr.com/post/640334511303966720/daemon-au-living-rent-free-in-my-head)  
> [a memory](https://midzilla.tumblr.com/post/640501523196018688/a-memory-bonus-design-shamelessly-stolen-from)  
> [Dandelion's daemon](https://midzilla.tumblr.com/post/640972057340985344/people-often-wondered-if-dandelion-had-elven)  
> [catching up](https://midzilla.tumblr.com/post/641769661355229184/catching-up)  
> [on the way home](https://midzilla.tumblr.com/post/642604345649774592/on-the-way-home)


End file.
